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Special Report: Food Universe Marketplace - Clifton, NJ

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By Zachary
Food Universe Marketplace
Owner: Kevin Kim
Opened: April 2023
Previous Tenants: Grand Union (closed by 2001) > Rite Aid
Cooperative: Key Food Stores
Location: 435 Lexington Ave, Clifton, NJ
Photographed: May 22, 2023
The ongoing shrinking of Rite Aid -- and the general closure of a lot of chain drugstores in the New York metro area -- has led to a lot of supermarkets opening in former drugstores. Here in New Jersey, most recently a 16,000 square foot former Rite Aid has been transformed into the latest Food Universe Marketplace to open. Initially announced as a SuperFresh, the store switched to Food Universe before it opened (likely because of its proximity to the Botany Plaza SuperFresh, owned by a different owner).
The outside has been painted a... bold yellow and fitted with new Food Universe signage. You can also see that Food Universe is still using the giant Grand Union-era sign out by the street, which is important since the store is not highly visible from either street it faces.
The former Rite Aid drive-through pharmacy area has been turned into a large cart corral, although if you look carefully the drive-through equipment is all still fully intact. This made me wonder if there would be a lot of remnants of the pharmacy inside the supermarket. However, the interior is completely new -- there's absolutely no signs that this used to be anything other than a supermarket inside, and to be honest, this is one of the best conversions of a drugstore to a supermarket that I've ever been to.
I have my complaints about execution, but the fact is this store looks fantastic. It feels way larger than its relatively small size, and the selection is impressive for a small store. We enter on the corner in the front left of the store, with deli, hot food, and butcher on the left side wall. Packaged meats and seafood are on the back, with dairy and frozen at the far right. As we'll see, the right-side wall is slightly diagonal, likely because of site constraints.
The area's large Mexican population is clearly represented in the store's prepared foods offerings, with housemade tortillas and a large selection of hot foods, along with fresh-made guacamole. There was some unfortunate but comical signage for the guacamole, however...
Spicy and Do Not Spicy. I'm guessing this is a translation from Korean (owner Kevin Kim's native language) to Spanish to English, so hey, they get the point across. I want to emphasize again that the store looks fantastic and seems to be fairly well-run, much more like Kim's other store, the SuperFresh of Bloomfield, than his past stores, such as Bell Farms. Meat and seafood looked exceptional, produce was mostly good with a few items that weren't. Pricing across the store was quite strong, especially for a store that's not a big-chain. It remains to be seen if the store will continue to be as well-run as it was for opening.
One odd thing to note, though: there's no decor at all, other than aisle markers and checkout lane numbers. I'm not sure why this is, or if perhaps over time they'll add signage but it wasn't ready for the opening. You won't see a lot of people in the store, but I was here around 1 pm on a Monday -- not exactly a peak shopping time.
Service butcher counter at the back of the store. Again, this is larger and more full-service than what we might expect from a 16,000 square foot supermarket.
Looking down the back wall, we see packaged meats (with another refrigerator case facing this one) and spices, with seafood where the green walls are. Kim has a second Food Universe in progress, in part of a former Gala Fresh Farms (previously Food Basics and A&P) in the next city over, Passaic, and a former Walgreens in Old Bridge is expected to reopen as a SuperFresh soon -- although it's been a long time with no real movement on that, so I'm not sure what its status is. This store's bags have the addresses of this store and the Passaic one, even though it's not open.
Quite the large spice department here in the back of the store, between the meat department and the seafood department. You can see a little bit of the live seafood tanks -- again, something not typically seen in the smaller supermarkets, but I'm betting the Food Universe owners are using these features to distinguish the store from the larger ones around. We're also, by the way, just 650 feet from an ALDI at this Food Universe.
Again, we see a surprisingly large grocery selection in the aisles. I'm guessing that's another way they're trying to attract business -- while ALDI has a very simple, basic selection, they are going for the full range including lots of name brands and lots of international items.
Seafood is in the back right corner of the store. And the back wall is shorter than the front wall because of the diagonal side wall of the store, so the last few aisles are all different lengths. We have frozen in the second-to-last aisle, then the last aisle becomes very wide. There's another set of a few short aisles in the front with non-foods next to customer service.
Once again, you can see that the store feels larger than it is. The high ceilings help.
Opposite dairy in the last aisle we have sale items and kitchenwares.
There are three short aisles in the front with HABA and nonfoods/paper goods, all labeled aisle 8 on this sign. Customer service is visible straight ahead of these aisles.
And a look at the front-end before we head out...
One more thing. My lunch! I grabbed a few empanadas in the deli department. Delicious! And $3 for two empanadas. I enjoyed them in the car before heading home...
I really enjoyed this Food Universe, but the execution is just not as good as it could be. Produce needs to be fresher, most importantly, for the store to really impress me. But otherwise, it was a really good store, and an exceptionally good transformation of a former drugstore. We'll see how Old Bridge and Passaic turn out when they open! In the meantime, there's a lot more to see today...

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